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The Yards

2000

James Gray

Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan ...

6.2

4,869

Drama. Mystery In the rail yards of Queens, contractors repair and rebuild the city's subway cars. These contracts are lucrative, so graft and corruption are rife. When Leo Handler gets out of prison, he finds his aunt married to Frank Olchin, one of the big contractors; he's battling with a minority-owned firm for contracts. Willie Gutierrez, Leo's best friend, is Frank's bag man and heads a crew of midnight saboteurs who ruin the work of the Puerto ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"It's [the] ambiguity that makes the film interesting (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Self-importance sinks this one like a stone (...) [It has] big ambitions, and 'The Yards' staggers under their weight"	NEG
United States	Stephen Holden The New York Times	"For all its incongruities, 'The Yards' is a serious film that strives for a moral complexity and a textural density rarely found in contemporary dramas."	POS
United Kingdom	Matt Ford BBC	"Gray avoids the more obvious gangster clichés, and the film brings some genuinely original flourishes to the genre (...) Sadly however the film's narrative power seems to falter midway (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"'The Yards' is an 'On the Waterfront' wannabe, directed with a heavy portentousness that smothers the drama in a thick sauce of self-importance"	NEG
United Kingdom	Sheila Johnston Screendaily	"A class act, beautifully crafted in all departments. But it labours, like the earlier film, under the weight of a sombre tone and a formulaic narrative that, in the end, doesn't deliver its promised emotional punch."	NEU
United Kingdom	William Thomas Empire	"Better in execution than in content, and Gray will be a name to watch once his talents are allied to a better screenplay (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU

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